


Wrapped in Orange Firelight

by DanseDan



Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, mild hinting at trans!Kim, written in game-style
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 11:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29807421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DanseDan/pseuds/DanseDan
Summary: PAIN THRESHOLD [impossible: failure]: The bubbling, new-familiar ache of love springs in your chest. You wish he was here.Kim has been gone for a week on a fieldwork assignment, leaving Harry at home alone for the first time. With only a day left until he is due to return, Harry tries to fill time by snooping around in his side of the closet.
Relationships: Harry Du Bois/Kim Kitsuragi
Comments: 15
Kudos: 35





	Wrapped in Orange Firelight

**Author's Note:**

> I read @gutterinouterspace's (on tumblr!) headcanon about Kim having a handful of nigh-identical orange jackets and I got The Brainworms to write a sweet little thing while I hack away at my actual post-mart fic. It's very kind and indulgent, so it doesn't really match my *actual* headcanon about how their relationship goes down, but it was a lot of fun to write.

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN- One foot in the nothingness and one foot on the land of the living… Awful rude to be spread out like that, party-boy, even aside from how awful it *feels*.

LIMBIC SYSTEM- your mind is empty, dropped-to-your-gut empty, but somehow still light, and not sticky- what you feel is not quite a pain, but still an awful absence.

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN- Harry-baby… you really are desperate, aren’t you?

YOU- What?

REACTION SPEED- you awake with a start, almost falling from your precarious perch on the thick, rusty heating pipe you use as a makeshift drying rack.

PERCEPTION(SIGHT)- you’d started to nod off in front of the laundry machine.

INLAND EMPIRE- Its constant, frantic whirling draws a kinship from you. You feel like one amongst the multitude of linty socks floating in the caustic, soapy waters of repetitive oblivion. Lost, surrounded by the blurred-over figures of their cohabitants, and yet alone in their tumultuous journey, separated from their other half without the certainty of rejoining without incident to comfort them.

ENCYCLOPEDIA- Kim Kitsuragi, your partner (and your lover- an epithet you have not yet entirely gotten over the novelty of applying to him), has been gone for a week on a fieldwork assignment.

LOGIC- he’s fine, he called you on the phone last night and he’s due to return tomorrow.

PAIN THRESHOLD [impossible: failure]: but you still miss him terribly. You feel like someone’s dug a hole in your gut with a bucketful of rusty spoons and left you to bleed by the roadside.

AUTHORITY [trivial: failure]: you’re being a total baby about it and you should stop it and man up.

EMPATHY [medium: failure]: he probably hasn’t even thought about you at all.

ESPIRIT DU CORPS- at this moment, Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi is writing up a series of reports from the familiar discomfort of a roadside hotel. He’s made up the bed as a courtesy and spread out everything he’ll need in neat little piles on the desk- train tickets and a slim science-fiction volume for the ride back, his ledger and completed papers with his notebook, and, positioned closest to him, a postcard of the area (bleak, with unforgiving concrete architecture) and a sea-smoothed piece of glass in an inviting, muted shade of green.

He runs a naked finger over its surface repeatedly as he writes. He wonders, idly, as his automatic memory works to fill out all the required fields before him, about the reason he picked up the glass pellet, and spent the change from his cigarettes that week on the postcard.

EMPATHY- Mostly he sighs and smiles about it. About you, waiting at home for him, covering up your babbling poorly on your last phone call and making a fool of yourself, about the burning of his own ears at the sound of your affection for him, about how grateful he is that you weren’t there to see it.

PAIN THRESHOLD [impossible: failure]: The bubbling, new-familiar ache of love springs in your chest. You wish he was here.

PERCEPTION (sound)- the load of laundry is done- the machine chimes, a tinny marching tune you’d usually whistle along with.

VOLITION- usually you’d also just scooch everything on the drying rack until you had absolutely no choice but to fold and put away your clothes, but you need something to do that isn’t staring at the wall and sulking. This is good as anything else right now.

YOU- You hop down from your perch and throw your sad little pile of dry clothes over your shoulder- it’s only really your work outfits, all varying shades of embarrassingly disco and thoroughly unprofessional- and proceed to walk into your room.

THE LOVE NEST, HONEYMOON SUITE, SMOOCH HOOCH, ETC, ETC, ETC- is an intensely average room for the sort of crappy old pre-revolutionary apartment that suits the pay grade of two mid-rung RCM officers: Nondescript blue-grey walls with inoffensive abstract artworks hung upon them (old university assignments of yours you’d found while cleaning out your old place, after Martinaise) and a ratty, thin wooden bookshelf. On it, sci-fi volumes, racing magazines, mechanical textbooks and manuals, horrible period dramas with the faintest suggestion of a homoerotic undertone, battered copies of communist theory obviously stolen from a university library, brightly-colored cheap paper zines, and a selection of modern, surreal and scientific (with the notable addition of one *crypto-scientific*) anthologies lined up like a ragtag army, interrupted only by the sluggish, light rectangle of a suzerainty board tucked into the middle shelf, taking up a seat of honor. In the middle of the room is a cozy psychedelic shag carpet that leads into a plain full-sized bed, currently haphazardly tucked together.

PERCEPTION (sight)- Kim’s pillow, off to the left, lies out of its usual position to form a parallel with the side of the bed. Its case is rumpled, and a corner of it is a little wet.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY- this pillow has borne witness to unspeakable things over the course of this week.

ENCYCLOPEDIA- actually, you only jacked off once or twice because it made you cry too much. That wet stain is from you sobbing yourself to sleep while cuddling it yesterday.

YOU- it makes you incredibly sad to look at.

-1 MORALE

VOLITION- if nothing else, the satisfaction of completing this simple task will help you cheer up a little- go get the clothes ready to be put away in the closet.

ELECTROCHEMISTY- or you could cry into the pillow again. To be exact, again-again-again-again.

COMPOSURE- four times so far in a week isn’t too bad for you. especially considering this is your first entirely Kim-free week since Martinaise, and pathetically crying is all you did, generally managing to stay sober, show up to work and not live in total filth.

  1. **[VOLITION: challenging]:** **Put the clothes away.**
  2. [ELECTROCHEMISTRY: medium]: I’ve been good for too long; I deserve to cry like a little bitch.



YOU- sitting down on the bed, you start sorting your stuff to fold and hang up. The results may be a little sloppy, but you’re careful with the motions, having relearned them just recently (and having been out of practice for likely more reasons than just amnesia).

CONCEPTUALIZATION- it was one of the first things you did together, off the case. There wasn’t much between the two of you to move into this apartment as far as belongings went, but you certainly had plenty of mess to deal with. And even after packing all that crap away, moving only meant you had to drive it a couple blocks across the city and then set it all up again. still, the memory of Kim’s patient instruction, his hands nudging yours into the correct movements, softly, patiently as always, was stuck at the forefront of your mind. Thumbing the once moth-eaten surface of your jeans conjures imagery of his contented smiles as he came back from work that first month you were sent on leave, walking through the door to see you deep in focus with the needle and the box of colored threads on the living room floor, humming lightly in awe of your ability to somehow not be frozen on the frigid wood. The subtle, coaxing ways he would excuse his touches, on your neck and hair and face and soon, proximity, his eyes so close to yours that you could kiss him, that you kissed him, kissed each other as he leaned into your constant warmth.

RHETORIC- Dolores Dei, now you’re thinking in paragraphs.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY- if he was here he could help you stop thinking in *anything*.

HALF-LIGHT [trivial: failure]: you need him, and he’s been gone so long…

LOGIC- he’s been gone for a week. And he’s coming back in less than a day.

YOU- you hang your head down dramatically, only to realize you’re actually done with setting everything up to put it away- undershirts and boxers folded, dress clothes slid onto their hangers. You feel a wave of satisfied relief pass through you.

+1 MORALE

VOLITION- you did it Harry, the clothes are absolutely conquered. Now time to put them away.

THE CLOSET- a realm unto itself, orderly, but thoroughly filled between clothes and other extraneous belongings. Since there’s only one in the room, you share it with Kim.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT)- it’s incredibly obvious when your side ends and his begins, even ignoring to your difference in size.

AUTHORITY- which is *noticeable*. You’re both broader and taller- one of your dress shirts would cover enough to make him decent.

ELECTROCHEMISTY- or rather, delightfully *in*decent. At most it’d reach his mid-thigh, highlighting the trim sinew of his legs. The baggy, light fabric could billow with the slightest breeze, leaving you a great peek at his spectacular ass-

VOLITION- you should stop thinking about this right now before you get a hard-on and have to face the existential nightmare of cry-wanking again.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY- but we had such a good fantasy going! Don’t you wanna see where it leads?

  1. [PAIN THRESHOLD: impossible]: I can handle a crywank. I’m the king of fucking crywanks. Bring it on!
  2. Let’s just forget that ever happened. I’m sure I can close my eyes when I pick an outfit every morning and no-one will notice (opt out)
  3. **I’m just going to tuck that one away for later. For scientific reasons. (opt in)**



TASK GAINED: BUILD UP AN ELABORATE KIM-CENTRIC SEXUAL FANTASY

PERCEPTION (sight)- the difference in style between you and Kim shines through in a variety of details and factors.

LOGIC- he dresses for efficiency.

DRAMA- while you dress to make an impression. Colors, textiles, patterns…

COMPOSURE- his clothes are more appropriate for his age- simple, mostly neutral-toned, classically masculine in a certain way.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY- yours trend more… suggestive

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [medium: failure]: not that it’s a wide appeal now- the shape you’re in, son…

EMPATHY- *Kim* likes what he sees, at least.

SAVOIR FAIRE- above all, Kim’s closet is mostly homogeneous- a couple different white shirts (V-necks, tank tops, a dress shirt for his uniform), the same style of baggy utilitarian pants he usually wears to work in a handful of dark muted colors, a pair of slacks, RCM uniform paraphernalia including an INCREDIBLY DORKY RAIN PONCHO, a black leather jacket and, of course, the pride and joy of his side of the closet- the orange jackets.

HUDDLED MASS OF ORANGE MILITARY-STYLE JACKETS- a handful of different jackets hang loosely next to each other. Every single one meticulously maintained- always clean, precisely patched and tailored. Some bear the RCM’s halogen watermark, and some do not.

  1. **Check out the OLIVE-LINED NYLON JACKET**
  2. Check out the ORANGE CANVAS RCM JACKET
  3. Check out the STRAIGHT-CUT CROPPED JACKET
  4. Check out the SOFT JERSEY RCM JACKET
  5. [PERCEPTION: challenging]: Rustle around in the closet a little more



OLIVE-LINED NYLON JACKET- Straightforward, masculine, so overtly militaristic it loops right back around to looking fictional- this is the Dick Mullen trenchcoat of bomber jackets. A present from an old friend with good intentions and good taste, but without Kim’s discerning eye for the aerostatic aesthetic.

+2 Savoir Faire (conventionally stylish action-hero look)

ENCYCLOPEDIA- This is Kim’s going-out jacket. He wears it when he’s spending time outside the precinct with coworkers, running errands, or on weeknight dates with you.

RHETORIC- It’s a guard against the world- it says less about him than his usual uniform.

COMPOSURE- it’s put together, clean.

DRAMA- It’s the character of the perfect stranger, *devastatingly* cool.

  1. Check out the OLIVE-LINED NYLON JACKET
  2. **Check out the ORANGE CANVAS RCM JACKET**
  3. Check out the STRAIGHT-CUT CROPPED JACKET
  4. Check out the SOFT JERSEY RCM JACKET
  5. [PERCEPTION: challenging]: Rustle around in the closet a little more



ORANGE CANVAS RCM JACKET- A hardy, somewhat oversized canvas biking jacket with a thick cotton standing collar and cuffs. On it, a convenient array of pockets (one on the left of the chest, two lateral pockets and one larger one hidden in the lining, the perfect size for his notebook) and the softly glinting rectangles of RCM watermarks. More heavily mended than the rest from daily use, this is one of Kim’s usual work jackets.

+1 Espirit du Corps (plainclothes beat cop), +1 reaction speed (speedfreak spirit)

ESPIRIT DU CORPS- A city’s breadth away, Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi shrugs off this jacket’s identical twin, distinguishable only by the slight inconsistencies in patching and repair between them.

INLAND ISLAND- below your fingertips, the same fabric, above your heads, the same hazy sky and its faraway stars. The third commonality between you is unspoken, but not unfelt.

+1 HEALTH

  1. Check out the OLIVE-LINED NYLON JACKET
  2. Check out the ORANGE CANVAS RCM JACKET
  3. **Check out the STRAIGHT-CUT CROPPED JACKET**
  4. Check out the SOFT JERSEY RCM JACKET
  5. [PERCEPTION: challenging]: Rustle around in the closet a little more



STRAIGHT-CUT CROPPED JACKET- half the weight of the rest through virtue of both its fabric and cut, this jacket is exclusively to be worn in an *unprofessional* capacity. The length sits precisely at the waist, draping lightly with a breezy, lightly shifting hem that shows off his waist and stomach. The fabric, thin and almost satiny in its dull sheen, makes for a perfect highlight of the flat planes and light musculature of his chest and shoulders underneath it, especially with those trim sleeves...

+2 suggestion (flirty drape), +1 electrochemistry (know you’re hot stuff)

SUGGESTION- Its collar is shorter than the others’, designed to fit snugly at the base of the wearer’s neck and frame the collarbone.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY- by Kim standards, having his neck out like that is being *BASICALLY NAKED*

ENCYCLOPEDIA- he also always seems to wear this jacket with a shirt that is just the right amount of conspicuously too small.

HALF-LIGHT- On display and out of reach- one minute, the fabric clinging to him like a second skin, another, and it’s nothing but a ripple of bright orange against the dancehall lights, nothing more than a mirage.

PAIN THRESHOLD [legendary: failure]: this jacket could be registered as cruel and unusual punishment under the laws of most countries. It could also probably bring about world peace. You have a lot of strong emotions about it.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY- and equally strong *reactions* to it.

TASK UPDATED: ELABORATE KIM-CENTRIC SEXUAL FANTASY

  1. Check out the OLIVE-LINED NYLON JACKET
  2. Check out the ORANGE CANVAS RCM JACKET
  3. Check out the STRAIGHT-CUT CROPPED JACKET
  4. **Check out the SOFT JERSEY RCM JACKET**
  5. [PERCEPTION: challenging]: Rustle around in the closet a little more



SOFT JERSEY RCM JACKET- An older, rather baggy jacket made of a soft cotton-jersey material, most likely bought second or thirdhand. The halogen watermarks on it have long started to peel off from age and idle picking, and despite being carefully maintained it has begun to get linty. It’s the only one of his work jackets that he’s not averse to wearing around the house, especially when you buckle down together for long winter nights in your poorly heated Prerevolutionary.

-1 interfacing (the sleeves go past his wrists, up to his knuckles), +5 suggestion (those baggy sleeves are hypnotizing)

INLAND EMPIRE- It holds the most genuine sort of warmth- the warmth of settling. Settling in, settling down, but also settling for reality. A dream that is set out and never won, the settlement of that emotion and the acceptance of what does arrive in its place. The triumph of an unexpected joy over one’s expectations.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT- he never did grow enough to fit this jacket, even now, at 41.

PAIN THRESHOLD- and he’s not entirely without mourning for it.

AUTHORITY- but he’s grown and overgrown what it once *really* meant.

ESPIRIT DE CORPS- It is twenty years ago in the Greater Révachol Industrial Harbour. Junior officer Kim Kitsuragi has just made patrol officer, shed the light-blue uniform he’s used as shorthand for himself going on six years already.

SHIVERS- all the pomp and circumstance is over- leaving only his trembling body and the roaring sea, the white “soldier” hanging limply at his side, an adult celebration he feels too giddy to indulge in.

RHETORIC- he savors this new title: if ‘officer’ was a sudden first breath of cleanly air, ‘detective’ is a pull of straight nicotine. He lets it roll over his tongue- “detective Kim Kitsuragi”

DRAMA- Nursing the thick material of the halogen watermarks in his palm, he stops to consider the type of man he really wants to be. More than to survive now- how is he going to be *seen*?

VOLITION- even after all these years, after that meek acceptance of the kind of man he ultimately is, he couldn’t bring himself to cut into this jacket, tailor it to size.

LOGIC- and so the collection begins, and eventually overtakes its origin.

  1. Check out the OLIVE-LINED NYLON JACKET
  2. Check out the ORANGE CANVAS RCM JACKET
  3. Check out the STRAIGHT-CUT CROPPED JACKET
  4. Check out the SOFT JERSEY RCM JACKET
  5. **[PERCEPTION: challenging]: Rustle around in the closet a little more**



+2 learned about the collection’s history.

PERCEPTION (TOUCH)- you jam a hand inside the closet and reach around until you feel a plethora of textures on your palm- cold, scratchy metal, rough overstitching, lining fabric and-

PAIN THRESHOLD- a tailor’s pin, driving shallowly into the flesh of your hand.

-1 HEALTH

HALF LIGHT [trivial: failure]: THERE’S A RABID METAL ANIMAL LIVING IN YOUR LOVER’S SIDE OF THE CLOSET AND IT’S JUST BIT YOU

  1. **[HAND-EYE COORDINATION: medium]: Pull it out**
  2. Leave the beast to roost inside your closet in peace.
  3. Gather supplies for the extraction of this clearly very distressed animal.



YOU- carefully, you bring your hand to the metal bar at the top of the closet and fiddle your fingers under the hanger that sits there, pressed inside.

ENDURANCE- it’s heavier than any single garment should be, but you adjust your strength accordingly and wrangle with it.

PERCEPTION (SOUND)- you can hear the light clacking of metal on metal.

REACTION SPEED- you can feel the weight of it teetering around as you wrench it out.

LIGHTLY DUSTY STACKED HANGER- emerging into the light, your eyes are hit with a pillar of orange fabric interrupted by blips of metal hooks. These were jackets once, clearly, but now it’s hard to see where one ends and the other begins, or if any of them begin at all. Zippers, patches, mending stitches, decals, safety-pins and sleeves jump out at random angles. You think you can see one with three arm holes and no bottom hem.

VISUAL CALCULUS- The jackets vary in age and make, but most are noticeably cheap. These are experiments, whims, practice making perfect.

INTERFACING- Kim Kitsuragi is meticulous, but human. He errs and expends effort as a trade-off to his skill.

RHETORIC- you just happen to see the end result more often than anything else.

VOLITION [challenging: failure]: You try hard to remember it, outside of moments like these. Sometimes you forget. Sometimes it feels inexplicable that such a perfect man would choose you, that his judgement would really show that sort of weakness.

EMPATHY- Kim Kitsuragi is meticulous, and he does not see his love for you as an exception. It’s been a careful, thorough choice, an effort every moment paying off with exponential dividends.

INLAND EMPIRE- the force of that decision was nigh-innocentic. For all its firm reality, for all its sweat and tears, it felt like it was meant to be.

PERCEPTION (SIGHT): tucked in between the torn and tailored fabric, there is a single complete jacket.

  1. **Pull it out and look at it**



RAGGED RCM BOMBER JACKET- It’s a bog-standard orange cotton jersey with RCM halogen marks at the sleeve and back, but it looks like it’s been worn through an apocalypse. The padded collar limp with loss of most of its interfacing, its seams ripped and ribbing falling apart, a large, brown bloodstain flowing down from the left shoulder, blurred at the edges with useless scraping, with the desperate rasp of a wasted old toothbrush. The zipper has detached in the middle of a single side, leaving gravity to pull it down into a toothy metal frown, like the wearer’s agony was somehow transferred to their garment.

INLAND EMPIRE- it feels intimately familiar and unimaginably important.

SUGGESTION- you want to draw it close to you.

PERCEPTION (SMELL)- and breathe it in.

KIM’S MARTINAISE JACKET- It smells of ocean air and antiseptic, of the weight of all the *sad* inside that trashed hotel room. It smells of smoke and sweat and underneath, somehow, still a little bit of Kim’s cologne. A fraction of his warmth remains in it, of his trepidation, of himself. You feel it fill your lungs and fill your memory.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY- it hits your senses immediately, a potent head high wracking through your synapses, taking hold of your every cell.

INLAND EMPIRE- it’s Kim, scarred and bruised and stubbly, kneeled at your side in the Whirling-in-Rags with his hands at your neck to feel your pulse, your breathing. It’s the halo of light that seems to frame his face, it’s “sunrise, parabellum” in his warm, accented voice.

ESPIRIT DU CORPS- it’s the perfect trust between you, your collaboration.

DRAMA- of labor and the self. Your re-becoming next to him.

EMPATHY- his reconsidering by the cause of you.

LOGIC- it’s yesterday’s affection and today’s fatigue, bringing you ambling towards a soft crash on the mussed-up bed.

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN- It’s the harbinger of a new, friendlier void. The darkness warm, suffusing at the edges of yourself with the belief that you’ll wake from it having had him by your side, having him still by it now and in the future.

Good-night, Harry-baby…

.

.

.

.

The weak, white rays of winter dawn have only just risen to shine against the lenses of your glasses as you climb the stairs of the ancient three-storey building you now call home. By now, you know well enough that neither the sun nor the apartment will save you from the deadly cold of Jamrock in the wintertime, but also that past a simple, selfish sacrifice there’s something- or rather, someone- that will gratefully supply the warmth you need. Now entirely outside the grasp of work, you allow yourself to savor the image- Harry, warm and wider than you, welcoming, likely at this point in the morning lazily draped across the bed or puttering around the kitchen in some state of undress. The soft, reddish down of his chest and the rumbling warmth of him against your cheek after a week of work sound like Elysium incarnate, and even more so the promise of a kiss, of his deep and raspy voice mumbling his usual nonsense in your ear, of his large hands draped against yours, your callouses kissing in the contact.

As you open the door, though, the house is dead quiet.

“…Harry?”

You can’t help it- it sets you on edge. Even if he is asleep, which would be in itself surprising, you’d expect to hear him rustling around, or letting out his usual stream of meek and breathless groans. Even with all of his improvements lately, sleep and Harrier aren’t friends, and he has a tenuous relationship with silence, a loaded past. A million worst case scenarios parade past the forefront of your mind, a cavalry of frigid shocks riding the adrenaline in your body’s veins.

The door to your room is cracked open, whistling lightly with the wind. You work up the composure to open it, even as your eyes grow thinner with suspense.

And for all your fear, you’re faced with his calm, sleeping body, turned away from you just so, towards the light- and wrapped around one of your old jackets.

Wrapped around *that* old jacket. The one you’d feared to keep.

You’d thought it would be *strange*, maybe off-putting if he ever found it. Reasoned that it was probably unhygienic that you could never bring yourself to clean it, a waste you never mended it to wear again. You thought it meant too much- or worse, that it meant too much to you and in reality, too little.

But Harrier is clutching to it like a lifeline, breathing steady, sleeping deeper than you’ve ever seen him. And he’s smiling- past the drool pooling on his mutton chops, under his mustache, you can see the gentle upward slope of his small, pink-tinged lips.

It feels like each breath burns with adoration, even past the first long exhale of relief.

.

.

.

.

.

PERCEPTION (TOUCH)- A fleeting moment of awareness, a weight across the bed and a warmth on your skin.

Kim is kissing you. It’s a soft, almost imperceptible peck against your lips.

VOLITION [legendary: success]: you kiss him back.


End file.
